CLANG-QUERY(1)

🌸 NAME 🌸

clang-query — bestie, it's literally the manual page for clang-query (version 21), and we're gonna get you fluent in it 💅

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

Okay so here's the vibe, fr fr. The usage is:

clang-query [options] <source0> [... <sourceN>]

And now the options, which is the part you actually came for 🫶

👑 OPTIONS 👑

🌈 Generic Options

• --help — shows you all the available options (and if you add --help-hidden you get even more, iykyk)
• --help-list — shows you a straight-up list of the available options (--help-list-hidden unlocks the secret extra ones too)
• --version — prints the version of this program, no cap

🎀 clang-query options

• -c <command> — tell it exactly which command to run
• --extra-arg=<string> — an extra argument that gets appended to the compiler command line
• --extra-arg-before=<string> — same energy but it gets prepended to the compiler command line
• -f <file> — read your commands from a file
• -p <string> — build path ✨
• --preload=<file> — preload commands from a file and then go straight into interactive mode, main character behavior
• --use-color — use colors in detailed AST output. If it's not set, then colors will still be used if the terminal connected to standard output supports colors. So like, it's giving optional 🌈

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🧚 the -p <build-path> situation

So -p <build-path> is what you use to read a compile command database.

For example, it can totally be a CMake build directory that has a file named compile_commands.json sitting in it — and heads up, you get that output by using the CMake option -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=ON. When no build path is specified, it will try to search for compile_commands.json through all the parent paths of the first input file. And if you want an example of setting up Clang Tooling on a source tree, it's right here: https://clang.llvm.org/docs/HowToSetupToolingForLLVM.html

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🦋 and the <source0> ... part

<source0> ... — this is where you specify the paths of your source files, bestie. These paths get looked up in the compile command database. Real talk on the rules though:

• If the path of a file is absolute, it needs to point into CMake's source tree.
• If the path is relative, then the current working directory needs to be in the CMake source tree, and the file must be in a subdirectory of the current working directory.
• Any "./" prefixes in the relative files get automatically removed — but the rest of a relative path must be a suffix of a path in the compile command database.

no cap, those path rules are strict. read them twice 💀

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and that's the whole page, periodt 💖 this was clang-query 21, dated September 2026, brought to you under CLANG-QUERY(1) — slay, go query some clang 👑✨